Lakefront Gun Club Must Hold Its Fire

The Lincoln Park Gun Club, home to trap and skeet shooters in the Chicago area since 1912, was ordered Thursday to stop operating by the Chicago Park District board.

Officials of the club said the shooting moratorium, which is to last until the club complies with all state and federal laws, would effectively close them permanently.

The unanimous order to immediately stop shooting was issued after an often emotional, one-hour debate. The club, at 2901 N. Lake Shore Drive, is located on the shore of Lake Michigan in Lincoln Park.

Thursday`s action was a culmination to some 30 months of negotiations surrounding charges that the club was polluting Lake Michigan with lead shot, plastic wadding from shotgun shells and clay targets.

Last week, Illinois Atty. Gen. Roland Burris sued the club in Cook County Circuit Court, charging violations of pollution laws.

``While I appreciate the cooperative spirit and willingness of the club to recognize the problem,`` said Parks General Supt. Robert C. Penn, ``their good-faith efforts are simply not enough to save Lake Michigan and protect our beaches from the environmental hazards caused by gun deposits.``

Penn had met with the club officers for 1 1/2 hours Wednesday.

``Our membership voted just last night to assess themselves $50,000 to pay for the engineering costs, which will be needed before the lead in the lake can be dredged,`` said Fred Lappe, an attorney and club president.

``Quite frankly it will be very difficult to get members to pay that assessment if they are unable to use the facility.``

Lappe noted that it was only in December 1990 that the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency told the club it should remove the lead from the lake bottom. Before that, the club was attempting to remove it

voluntarily.

``We are not talking about water quality, but the quality of the sediment at the bottom of the lake,`` Lappe said.

Lappe said he believes Thursday`s cease-fire order would be the last shot for the club`s future.

``I do not believe that we will open again,`` Lappe said. ``Our members may wish to spend monies that we would have spent on a clean-up for litigation.``

``This resolution will ring the death knell for the Lincoln Park Gun Club,`` said Park Commissioner Joseph Phelps. ``That is very unfortunate, because the club has been there longer than we have.``

The club was founded in 1912 by prominent Chicago business leaders and was later opened to the public. The Park District was organized in 1934.

Will Longenecker a member of the club`s board of directors, told the park board that the club was ``working to solve the problems that we know that we have created.``

``We have the drawing of a netting device now before the Army Corps of Engineers that would catch the plastic wadding before it entered the lake,``

he said. ``We have been paying a penny for every wad that has been turned into us for almost a year. We have collected over 1.1 million of them, and I am told by the park district officials that there have been no complaints about the wadding since this program began.``

Longenecker said the club members paid $32,000 for water and soil testing along the lakefront and had found a company two years ago that would remove the lead. But their efforts were frustrated when the park district would not let the workboat dock in nearby Belmont Harbor, but instead required it to travel 1 to 1 1/2 hours each way to reach the work site.

An estimated 400 tons of lead is on the bottom of the lake near the club. Both Longenecker and Lappe stressed that water in most Chicago buildings is carried through lead pipes and the lead on the lake bottom presents no health hazard.

``If you suspend our operation, it will be the demise of the club. If we are going to remove the problem, then why not let us continue to operate and put another ton in,`` Longenecker said.

``There are two issues here,`` countered Cameron Davis, deputy director of the Lake Michigan Federation, an environmental organization. ``One is the cleanup, and the second is the ongoing discharge. We have to object to the continuing discharge of lead shot into the lake.``

``The moratorium sounds fair; we would like to see you back in business,`` said Commissioner William Bartholomay, who observed that his father was the 1926 amateur skeet-shooting champion.

Jay Schatz, 73, a former director and ``elder statesman`` of the club, spoke bitterly after the resolution was passed.

``A large part of this is a phony issue,`` Schatz said. `` Pollution is not the real issue here, it is guns. You have closed us; we will never open again. Thanks for all the good years.``